The War You Don't See

Embarrassed to have never heard of John Pilger before today, but I thought this was great, and am gladly going to seek out all his other documentaries that I can get my hands on.

You do have to get past the presentation, because while it's feature length (and content-wise much more informative than many movie length documentaries), it's not really presented in a particularly cinematic way. I didn't mind this once I adjusted to the style, because the arguments and interviews and statistics were more than compelling enough. I only mention it as one of the only potential negatives with the overall documentary (oh and a little unfair putting The Deer Hunter and The Green Berets in the same boat. The former probably can't be viewed as propaganda exactly, but the point about it honing in on the American perspective and framing them as the victims was eye-opening and honestly a good point).

I love how straightforward Pilger is, I love his interview style, and I love the fact that he does interview people on both sides. Overall he strikes me as an incredibly intelligent guy who can nonetheless break down complex issues and explain them in ways that are straightforward and easy to digest, even if you're not particularly knowledgeable about what he's covering.

It covers conflicts from years long past, but its central message about the media's potential to manipulate the presentation of war is still relevant, and unfortunately is likely to remain so indefinitely.

An amazingly brave documentary about the place of mass- media propaganda in war. If in communism mass media don't have anything to criticise because everything go well , in capitalism the first duty of mass media is to criticise the governements..There are very few journalist who does that. The dezinformation , the brain washing is the real flag of the mas media. The movie was made in 2010 and it refers at the wars in Iraq ,the war from Vietnam , from Afghanistan where american and british are the propagandists of lieying , and the war between Israel and Palestine. You realise if that movie were made in 2023 only from the intervention of Russia in Nazicraine when the manipulation and desinformation of western media.peaked the highest point. And now only Oliver Stone from the west show the truth.

This is, I agree, compulsory viewing. This is the first documentary about the corruption of war by propaganda which serves to progress the argument beyond the usual hysteria. Pilger has, with this film, moved away from the slew of similar-themed documentaries which add little to the debate but more circular arguments. Instead, Pilger goes straight for admissions of guilt. He manages to get some truly frank disclosures of global conspiracy and madness from the most relevant people he could realistically get access to, and for this he deserves the praise.

It can be argued, and it will be no doubt, that there is very little material to act as a counterweight to his position in the film. But after you finish watching it, you will hopefully realise what a stupid criticism it is to make in the first place, considering what this documentary is designed to rally against.

I won't get into the moral position it presents, as that's up to you in the end, but I'd be hard pushed to find anybody not moved, repulsed or outraged by this film, or all of those things simultaneously. Just watch it. Do it now.

There is an Islamic tenet:

"It's enough for a person to be considered a liar if he narrates everything he hears."

These words were a cautionary statement to Muslims not to gossip or pass on every bit of unverified information they hear. I can see in this documentary that John Pilger is essentially saying the same thing to the various media personnel he interviewed that passed on the propaganda they'd gotten from American, Britain, and Israel.

"The War You Don't See" is about the propaganda version of war versus the the unedited, unfiltered version of war. John Pilger touches on several wars, but puts a lot of attention upon the Iraq War. Everyone now can claim that they always knew that Iraq had no WMD (weapons of mass destruction) nor were they connected to 9/11, but that certainly wasn't the prevalent belief in 2002. "The War You Don't See" shows just a tidbit of the war we didn't see in Iraq.

Again, John Pilger gets the blood boiling regarding the actions of the western powers like no one else can. I appreciate and loathe him for it. I appreciate knowing the atrocities that are being committed, but I hate being so angry and powerless. Still, I will watch whatever Pilger produces because it's always revelational and always important.

This isn't a bad documentary but it's pretty misleading in the sense that it almost exclusively focuses on the Iraq War and other modern wars which are in reality very minor conflicts compared to WWI, Korea and Vietnam. It's advertised as being about the media manipulation of truth in war but focuses almost exclusively on wars of the las 20 years. There is a brief mention of Wilson being told of the need to sell WWI to the people but nothing is said about the blatant lies told to Americans in order for Wilson to get his war. Korea was a colossal blunder presented as being a war to free South Korea from the communist North Korea but that happened after just 6 months yet the war went on for another 2 and a half years.

Several "journalists" admit the media didn't do their jobs but this admission seems to get them a pass without them being asked why we should trust them now. This could have been a great documentary if it had dug deep and even looked at the media covering up the fact that WWI was never about freedom and how Hitler could have been stopped much earlier if Chamberlain hadn't engaged in his campaign of appeasement. The media also presented Stalin as a villain when he initially was siding with Germany but once the Germans invaded Russia the media did a complete turnabout and always showed Stalin as a great ally.

This is extremely disappointing because it could have been a great film if it had bothered to dig deeper, it didn't lie but it told only a small portion of the truth.